Tattoo Art

 For our May talk we were pleased to welcome tattoo artist Gavin Jones from Sinking the Ink tattoo studio. I mentioned to a friend that we were having Gavin to speak to us and she said she thoroughly recommended him and has two tattoos by him. What better recommendation? The talk was held in the Council Chamber at the Civic Offices where we haven't sorted out the acoustics but will persevere.

Taking photographs was difficult because the screens were either to the right or left of me. I'll intersperse them with some notes I took on the night. Gavin talked about the procedure of tattooing where ink is inserted with a needle below the skin. It sounds obvious, but I hadn't realised that it has to go quite deeply into the dermal layer if it's to be permanent.

Tattooing is an ancient art; tattoos were found on a 4000 year old man who died from battle wounds. The marks we were shown were quite rudimentary marks compared with those which were found on less old bodies. Above you can see some of the more complicated patterns employed. People also applied dye to the skin with an Otzi needle in 3500 BC and the women in the top picture probably had woad applied to their bodies. I'm uncertain how much body paint was used to decorate bodies, or frighten other people away.

I took a photo of Gavin talking, he had to sit at an awkward angle to speak into the microphone. Roman soldiers got tattoos and between 100BC and 200 AD tattoos were widely accepted. In 400 AD during the Islamic invasion of Europe, Christian children were tattooed with a coptic tattoo which gave them kinship with other Christians. By 700 AD when the Vikings were around, there was no evidence for them having tattoos. Tooth filing was employed at one stage of history with soldiers having notches to remind them of battles they had fought in. In the Crusades of the 9th and 10th Centuries, soldiers had tattoos while they were away fighting.

Above is a photograph of the amazing Razzouk Tattoo shop in Jerusalem where tattooing has taken place for the last 27 generations of tattooists in the Razzouk family. In 2007 Wassim was persuaded by his father Anton to carry on the business. Do click on the link to find out more; they possess stencils 700 years old. On Facebook, the page is called Razzouk Tattoo - since 1300 and very interesting, Wassim has quite a rock star image and travels around the world to tattoo conventions.

Gavin ended his talk with some examples of tattoos on bodies and reminded us that Captain Cook didn't 'discover' tattoos in the 1750s, they had been around long before that.

And here are some of the audience with drinks before the talk

Looking forward to our next talk, Dee Ferris in conversation with Katie Ackrill on 13 June at 7.30pm in the Civic Offices.